For the love of Fiction!
Reading fiction opens up whole new worlds for us – it helps us escape a world that is fast spiralling towards anarchy. It helps us counter pessimism. It teaches us to imagine and transcend our situations – something not everyone can do. Here are a few books we published recently that provide us with an alternative to reality.
Halfway to the heavens, in a realm hidden by clouds, a divine beauty—a Yakshini—is facing a sentence for her folly. Down on earth, a couple in Maharashtra is expecting their seventh child, and is performing a special yajna to fulfill their desires. By a strange quirk of fate, these two distinctly different lives are soon to be intertwined. Neil D’Silva’s Yakshini is a toe-curling, spine-tingling tale where mythology comes deliciously alive on the page. With its fantastic creatures and unforgettable characters, the book highlights the tussle between the supernatural and the human, sure to enchant all readers.
The Monsters Still Lurk by Aruna Nambiar
It is 1991. As Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated and a new government comes to power, setting in motion a process of economic reforms that will transform India, an ordinary family is about to experience detours from the traditional middle-class script of their lives. Over the next quarter century, as the world around them changes in unexpected ways, their lives too wind along uncharted trails, sometimes sunlit, sometimes shadowy and forbidding.
In a world that has commoditized femininity and idealized only one body type, this book is the story of four girls with diametrically different views about beauty and how their lives get inextricably enmeshed. Inspired by true incidents, Skin Deep shines a light on the ugly truth behind the facade of beauty and glamour.
The Worst Daughter Ever by Aarti V Raman
The black sheep of the Chakrapani clan is coming home…Lasya ‘LJ’ Raghavan is a spectacularly single, unsuccessful playwright with an estranged family, crippling debt, and a dead-end job. When the family matriarch Chandralekha Chakrapani dies, LJ has to face the family that considers her an epic failure… Written in the style of bestselling Indian rom-coms, The Worst Daughter Ever explores love, loss, friendship, family, redemption and forgiveness in a funny, emotional, coming-of-age tale.
When her father’s unexpected death renders Disha homeless, she is brought to Kolkata by her father’s best friend, to live with them. Home is now a rambling joint family where there are more young men than Disha has even known in all her life. A far cry from the simplicity of her life back in Hamirpur, Disha sets about trying to fit in with the rhythms of this household and its members. And then she meets the second son and star of the family—Siddhant. Sid is the lead guitarist of the rock band, Derozio Dreams, and when he discovers that Disha is a classically trained vocalist, he brings her to his band to enhance their fusion repertoire. Music becomes their meeting ground and with Sid involving himself in her initiation into the band, they draw closer, to the chagrin of some family members, especially his mother, who thinks Disha, the outsider, has transgressed. Will the promise of love and the music that Disha and Sid make together triumph over all odds?
Happy Reading!
***
Click on the book titles to get to the Amazon links.